From dartvax!bu.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!nmouawad Tue Feb 12 16:21:41 EST 1991 Article 168 of soc.culture.lebanon: Path: dartvax!bu.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!nmouawad >From: nmouawad@watmath.waterloo.edu (Naji Mouawad) Newsgroups: soc.culture.lebanon Subject: Testimony of War Message-ID: <1991Feb8.030246.22962@watmath.waterloo.edu> Date: 8 Feb 91 03:02:46 GMT Organization: University of Waterloo Lines: 87 Subject: Testimony of War Lines: 64 A friend of mine, has posted this letter in the uruguayan mailing list. This letter is from an iraqui girl, who is not with SH, but has relatives in Iraq. You may agree with her or not, but I think we should respect her testimony, because many people is suffering like her. X. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear friends, Thanks to all of you for your concern. It has been hard for me to talk about the situation and answer your questions. I find writing a bit easier as a mean to express myself, so I'll resort to that and apologize for using e-mail for personal purposes, but I do owe you all a sincere chat. 1) On the situation in Iraq. The situation in Iraq is very bad. The country is completely destroyed; not only are military cites the targets of the bombing, but also every bridge, mill, factory, post office. It doesn't take much to imagine the devastation: the tonnage of bombs used in the first week alone exceeded that used in all of World War II!! a simple calculation which assumes 80% accuracy (military analysts put the number down to 60-70%) would result in frightening numbers of casualties. 'Surgical strikes' rings a very painful bell in our recent memory; it was first used in 1982 by the Israelis when they were bombing Beirut, the result was 20,000 civilian casualties in three months. Conservative estimates are putting the civilian toll in Iraq at 6,000 -10,000, other estimates range from 100,000-300,000 (just count the number of sorties flown over cities and assume only 5 die in each raid!). These estimates don't include those who die of heart attacks or due to the lack of medicine. Swedish TV reported 3 days ago that there is a breakout of cholera and possible other epidemics due to lack of water and the contamination of the rivers by the fallout from bombing the chemical plants -which includes pharmaceutical factories-. With no protection against lethal leaks, no electricity, water, food, medicine, and now gasoline, a mass genocide is happening. 2) My family. I haven't heard from my family yet, but their images haunt me. The only news I've heard was that the fathers of two friends of mine have died of heart attacks because of the bombardments. Both happened during the first week when there was 24-hour bombing of the cities. Other second-hand accounts from refugees paint a very dark picture. 3) How am I coping, and hard lessons learned. It has been tough to sit and watch all this happen without many questioning the real motives of the war -obviously not Kuwait- or the human dimension. Throughout history Arabs have been prosecuted time and time again from the crusades, to English and French colonization, the Israelis and now this war. Still, the Arabs are the ones called 'murderers', 'terrorists' and so on! Newspeak at its best. I don't know exactly how I'm coping; the world just seems like a big jungle and the powerless have no say. I try to learn more about history, and to resurrect past forgotten memories, for the bombs are not just killing us physically but also emotionally. Our memories, history, and dreams have been destroyed. The saddest part of all this is what's happening to the Iraqi people. They have suffered so much for years from their government (which was backed by the west), and now they are being punished severely for events they were opposed to and had no say in. Just like what the generals used to say during the Vietnam war 'we're destroying a village to liberate it'. This couldn't have happened unless the assumption was that people from third-world countries, simply, don't count. Abeer ------------------------------------------------------------------ --Naji. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- | Naji Mouawad | nmouawad@watmath.waterloo.edu | | University |---------------------------------------------------| | Of Waterloo | "The Stranger in us is our most familiar Self" |